Bloodied In Bratislava and other stories

Kia ora bros,

My skip through Central Europe started in Ljubljana, a very nice and small capital, where I helped cook vegetarian tacos for lunch and listened to Slovenian hip-hop, and had vodka and cigarettes for dinner. Living the dream comes in unexpected forms sometimes when you travel with this. Then went out to nearby Lake Bled the next day, which was beautiful with a small island and church in the middle and a castle on the cliffs beside, and mountains behind, and unfortunately a surprise thunderstorm above which got us soaked. Nice place though.
Then on to Ptuj, a pretty little town on the railway line to Budapest. Not much to report from there but nice enough for a day. Budapest was amazing though! Very beautiful, in an imperfect and grandiose kind of way. I met my classmate Anna from Perugia there and she showed me round a bit, then my friend Fabrice who I met in Sydney. It is a small world. Spent a day in Debrecen with two more Perugia classmates, Fruzsina and Zsombor. There´s not a lot of interest for tourists in Debrecen, except for some novelty oversized cows, but it was a nice day and Fruzsina´s grandmother had cooked up a big Hungarian feast for lunch which was great of course. Mmmm, paprika.

Followed the river up to Bratislava. The first 6 hours there were nice, wandering round the old town, going to an amateur film festival. The next 4 were in the hospital emergency room, after your classic chasing-a-frisbee-at-full-speed-in-the-dark-and-not-seeing-an-iron-bar accident. Would probably have been quite funny to see actually. I got some souvenir x-rays, maybe even a scar, and definitely away from the tourist crowds so it´s not all bad And learnt that the Slovak word for ´stitches´is ´shit´ in a late night English lesson with the nurses. You can imagine the conversation: ”you will need some – how you say? shit? – on your head”. I am fine now, thanks for asking, my formerly hunchbacked arm is now merely swollen and the stitches will come out of my forehead in a couple of days. Next day out to a beautiful castle where the Moravia joins the Danube.

… which I again followed upriver, into Vienna, where I am now. What can I say? Oh la la. To put it glibly, it´s very, very nice. Amongst all the usual stuff I also went to a wierd IT museum and learnt about The Degree Confluence project which is rediculous enough that I like it. Vienna and Budapest are a little similar – or course, given history – but have different feels to them. Vienna is like a model wearing an evening dress and listening to Mozart. Budapest is her younger sister who dresses like a punk and listens to The Transistors. Both are good.

That is all.
Ka kite.